Our Favorite Cookbooks of 2017

We don't know which 2017 cookbook was the most thoroughly tested. And we don't know which has the least typos. What we know is which books inspired us to think differently, to try something new, and to overall cook more. Here they are.

"The people in my life are so sick of me talking about Zingerman's (though I don't think they're sick of me sending them reuben-making kits). But all my chatter about this family of businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan will have been worth it when they taste the hot cocoa cake from this book. It's easily the most delicious chocolate cake I've ever made at home. Up next: the Detroit-style pizza."—David Tamarkin, Editor

"Everything in this gorgeous, smart cookbook is cookable and craveable, but what I really love in here are Joshua McFadden's salads. I cooked so many of them this summer—his celery-date salad, his celery-apricot salad. His combinations of raw vegetables and dried fruit were revelations to me, and now I'm obsessed."—AS

"When it comes to dinner, Melissa Clark understands your pain—and mine, too. I'm not a bad cook, but my weeknight menus tend to be heavy on whatever's left over from the weekend. Not Clark's—her recipes for weeknight dinners are so superlative and, beyond that, so ridiculously easy that I actually feel humiliated. How have I been falling so short for so long?"—Sam Worley, Senior Writer Emeritus

"Not every cookbook inspires the way it's supposed to, which makes Julia Turshen's Feed the Resistance that much more impressive: this humble handbook inspires twice. First, it inspires you to cook all the recipes inside. Then it inspires you to bring what you made to the nearest community action meeting."—DT

"Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion really understand what it's like to cook for a family, and they're skilled at laying out strategies (the brilliant staggered dinner concept) and writing recipes (baked penne with green chiles) that make weeknights a lot less hectic and a lot more delicious."—Anya Hoffman, Senior Editor

"Oh my god, I ate so much of the granola bark from this book this year. I love Elisabeth Prueitt because she's a fabulous pastry chef who makes gluten-free recipes that work. I gifted this book to my gluten-free mother and she's been cooking from it ever since."—Anna Stockwell, Senior Food Editor

"I've never thought as much about freshly ground spices as I do now that Sweet is out in the world. It's full of ingredients that I wouldn't have normally used in my baking—rose petal, orange blossom, tons of cardamom—but that, now, I can't imagine baking without."—Emily Johnson, Associate Editor

"An unfortunate-but-true fact is that many of the cookbooks I buy end up as coffee-table cookbooks. Not Alison Roman's Dining In. Within five minutes of owning it I had sticky notes on almost every page. It's the kind of cookbook that motivates you to go grocery shopping on a 23-degree day. To buy that ingredient you never knew you needed. To slow-roast a pork shoulder for the first time. To, well, dine in more."—Rachel Karten, Senior Social Media Manager

"Quickly-thrown-together dinners usually lack a certain kind of elegance, but Colu Henry makes pasta somehow both fast and elegant. These recipes converted me—they made me fall in love with the idea of last-minute dinner, instead of seeing it as a strictly sad affair."—EJ